Cats and Birds

These photos were taken by a Cats Protection volunteer who gave me permission to use them.
The black cat is one of a small colony who have all been TNR (trapped, neutered and returned) to the place they live and where CP volunteers feed them daily.

Cat and birds

As you can see the poor cat badly wants her dinner but the crows have taken it from her, we don’t know where the other cats were but they are all obviously very wary of those big black birds!

We have a crow living around here, he is huge and a cat would never be able to tackle him!
But we feed him so he’s a cat friendly crow lol

Fit healthy birds are well able to stand up for themselves (or should that be fly up for themselves lol) or fly away, they know when a cat is about!

Recently our neighbour disturbed a nest of blackbirds between our gardens, have you ever seen parent blackbirds defending their young? Our cats weren’t even interested in the nest, it was in a precarious position and in our garden every creature gets fed so it’s live and let live anyway.

Those blackbirds swooped and dived and shouted TKKK TKKK TKKK which may be their translation of CAT CAT CAT and poor Walter and Jozef who were happily relaxing on their sunroof, ran into the house.

Oh no, birds are not the poor tragic victims that cat haters make them out to be, they can fight back!

A funny tale from many years ago, our late mother’s first cat Kitty, decided to pay a visit to next doors hens, they were silly ignorant people who kept the hens on their lawn, with the gate open too! We heard a lot of squawking and Kitty came running home being hotly pursued by Henrietta, the brown leader of the hens!

We all know cats hate to be laughed at but we couldn’t help it that day, how I wish we had a photo!

But seriously, those of us who love cats have no illusions that yes cats do catch birds, Nature made them that way, but they only catch the weak birds, because rodents are so much easier to catch with being on the ground and they can’t fly away.

I wonder what the cat haters would have to say if all cats were eradicated from places? The rodents would be free to breed and to come near and into houses, because although I don’t know if it’s true, it’s said that rats and mice can smell cats and they steer clear of the immediate area where cats live.

I think cat haters should look to themselves and ask if they are so perfect in that they do nothing to harm birds.

Do they not use gas and electricity, drive a car, maybe smoke? Go on holiday in an aeroplane? All these pollute the atmosphere, the very air birds breathe!

Do they not breed and make more housing necessary, therefore taking more land, more habitat from birds. Do they not buy products which have been treated with pest sprays, causing the death of birds?

No, it’s far too easy to blame cats because they cannot defend themselves against the blame, but we can defend them and so I do and always will!

Ruth aka Kattaddorra

Please comment here using either Facebook or WordPress (when available).

Hi, I am 70-years-of-age at 2019. For 14 years before I retired at 57, I worked as a solicitor in general law specialising in family law. Before that I worked in a number of different jobs including professional photography. I have a longstanding girlfriend, Michelle. We like to walk in Richmond Park which is near my home because I love nature and the landscape (as well as cats and all animals).

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Cats and Birds — 16 Comments

Hi Ruth great article I agree totally btw. Its so easy for an eminent scientist to declare that cats decimate the bird population. These types are dangerous because most people look up to them therefore they believe them 🙁 so if said scientist also happens to be a cat hater then they have it all sown up they can say what they want about the poor cats.

I have to say that we’ve had Honey for about 2 years now and she’s never caught a bird. She’s killed and bought home plenty of Voles and Mice (Voles especially). She leaves their bodies on the patio but usually a Magpie will steal them. We don’t get many Crows but we do get an awful lot of Magpies and Wood Pigeons (did you know that in Scotland they call a Wood Pigeon a Cushy doo?!)

Honey doesn’t tackle the Magpies but I have seen her sneaking up on the Pigeons a few times. The Magpies also steal the food we put out for the stray cat and make a hell of a mess everywhere.

Felis catus catus was unknown in N America until quite recently so maybe the bird population has not yet developed instincts and methods to defend themselves against small cats as much as say in Cyprus. There have probably been small cats in Cyprus for 9,500 years when the first Anatolian settlers brought that cat fossil which was discovered at a burial site at Shilloroukambos. Other nearby archeolagical digs in the same area uncovered remains of many more cats which suggest that there were enough to on the island at that time to have sutvived to this day. I have never seen my cats catching or bringing back a dead bird. I reckon they gave up thousands of years ago as the birds got smarter than the cats. . Never-the-less birds seem to be holding their own in N America which seem to indicate that bird predation by cats is vastly exaggerated. Cats the size of the Bobcat and Lynx would find it difficult to prey on small fast moving healthy birds, and pet cats prefer to stay neat the food dish, many having a range of few hundred meters that’s all. Large woodlands and forests would never see a small cat.

Great article Ruth,I love the picture although feel sorry for the poor cat,CP volunteers do a marvellous job.
Marc is SO RIGHT
“If they REALLY cared about the birds they would REALLY find the root of the issue”
Of course they would but it suits them to blame cats and try to turn more people against them,it makes me sick.
Barbara is right too,why don’t those cat haters speak up for the birds killed for fun by PEOPLE?

Another great article Ruth, I’ve seen first hand cats scared of magpies chattering like football rattles and big black crows cawing at them, it’s not all in the cat’s favour by any means. Yes odd times it happens that a cat catches a bird, it’s sad, but it’s nature, it’s part of the great scheme of things, cats don’t catch birds out of badness they just follow their inborn instinct the same as they do catching mice, rats, frogs and rabbits. Some people speak up against cats for catching birds, they go on passionately about songbirds etc., if only these people put their passion into speaking up about well fed men and women going out for a day’s pleasure of shooting birds specially bred to die as gun fodder which are then mostly buried in a mass grave.

I had a group of black birds attack my Gigi in Canada and they really nipped at her and I got scared for her and ran out to scare them away.

I will make one admission though – my Gigi in Canada caught birds of all sizes. She did and there’s no denying it.

However – she is the only cat of about 10 I have known well that ever caught any birds. Red caught a few mice – not a single bird. Same with Pepi and same with Lilly. They spent all day outside and never caught a single bird.

I agree with the premise that the cat haters promote nonsense and exacerbate an issue in the wrong direction. If they REALLY cared about the birds they would REALLY find the root of the issue.

Kudos to Gigi, we must admit to catching quite a few birds when we were younger, not so many now but the mammies understand that we are cats and it’s our job to weed out the weaklings.
That’s what your Gigi was doing uncle Marc she was only weeding out the weaklings.
In our annals of history about all the cats who lived with the mammies before us is a bit about one called Bert who never caught a bird in his entire 17 years but one day a robin fell out of the sky at his feet so what could he do but bring it home? He also sat on a mouse one day and when he stood up it ran out from under him and he said ‘Bye bye Mickey’ Thirdly he clubbed a spider to death with his big paw.

Charlie is very wise.
The pigeons coming in our garden are almost as big as cats!
Yes scientists are very biased and they must be cold hearted too, especially the ones who experiment on animals in the ‘name of science’

I know what you mean Michael Honey wouldn’t dare tackle the Magpies yet she starts them off every morning without fail then when they line up on the fence and gang up on her they make that noise like a football rattle then there’s this stand off but she’s always the first to leave the scene 🙂

I have 7 adults male cats running around my garden full time plus several females and several others that go for walkabouts quite frequently and my garden is filled with birdsong. I have seen large black crows helping themselves to my cat’s food in the Winter and they just look on disinterested. They have got better things to do than take on a bad tempered crow armed with a dangerous weapon. The numerous small birds have their nests well out of reach. A family of doves successfully raised a brood of youngsters somewhere on the outside my house in the Spring and have flown off to their summer feeding grounds.

Harvey your garden sounds like a Paradise for cats and birds.
I think bird loving cat haters should credit birds with more sense, they know their predators and watch out for them and as you say crows are armed with a dangerous weapon no cat would like to challenge!
The size of the beak on the one who lives here is massive, I saw him swoop down and grab a dead mouse from our lawn one day, maybe our cats left him it to keep him sweet lol

Great essay, Ruth. I will add this: I have a friend in Scotland (internet) who has two Maine coons. He posted a picture on a photo site (how I know him) of one of the cats sitting high up on the fence, looking at the neighbor’s hen house. He said he was worried that one of the cats might take a fancy to going after them. I told him that I was very sure that the birds could take care of themselves, and if any party was injured, it would be one of his cats. He believed me, and stopped worrying. As it turned out, the cats might occasionally watch “hen house TV”, but they are smart enough not to tangle with them.

Thanks Valley Girl, lol ‘Hen house TV’ made me laugh.
Yes cats and bird can co-exist quite happily, at Kays Hill there are feral cats and unrehomeable cats who live free. During the day the hens and ducks and geese etc are outside and they don’t bother each other at all.

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